Peraza denied right to stay in US by ICE officials

Jesus Peraza, the Honduran who was picked up by immigration agents after he dropped off his son at Hampstead Hill Academy last March, will be forced to leave the country.

The notice came Tuesday in a letter to Jared Jaskot, Peraza's lawyer, from John Alderman, the deputy field director in Baltimore for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Alderman wrote that he could “not find a compelling reason” to allow Peraza, who has been in the U.S. for more than a decade, to stay.

Peraza, a 30-year-old father of three, and with another baby due this month, fled Honduras after witnessing a murder when he was 17 and having his own life threatened. He was held at the U.S. border and turned away, but got into the country illegally on his second try and joined his brother in Baltimore.

He has lived here without incident until the day he was picked up by ICE agents. He has been held in the Howard County Detention Center since then.

Jaskot pleaded with immigration officials last week to allow Peraza to stay, but to no avail.

"They don’t care if you haven’t committed any crimes," he complained Tuesday. "If you have a family, if you have kids. They don’t care about any of that."

Peraza is likely to be deported immediately, just days before his wife is due to deliver their baby.

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The simple task of dropping off or picking up a child at school became fraught with worry for parents at Hampstead Hill Academy in March when the father of a fourth grader was followed home and arrested by immigration agents. Now, parents, students and teachers at the school at Linwood and Eastern avenues have united behind their Latino parents and students.

"You never know when it is going to happen to you. So you live in fear and you live afraid," said David Rosario, father of a third-grader, in an interview at his office just blocks from the school.

In response to the arrest of Jesus Peraza, the Honduran father who was detained after dropping his 8-year-old son off at school, CASA, a Latino community organizing group, held a rally Thursday in front of immigration offices at Hopkins Plaza in downtown Baltimore.

Tucked into a corner off Eastern Avenue in Highlandtown, there are Latino-owned restaurants, blacked-owned barbershops, and one small grocery store owned by an immigrant-Nepalese family that opened in 2013.